Month: February 2015

Well, I promised everyone I would keep them up to date on my progress with the 54mm Spartan Hoplite I had bought from Tin Soldier Miniatures. So on Sunday I had a couple of hours free to put some more work in and this is where I currently am.

I am hoping to get some free time this week and hopefully finish by this weekend. I am really enjoying this scale and I am pretty sure I will be painting this scale much more often now.

It has been a few months since my last post, I wish I could blame my distractions on either Grad School, Work or family commitments, but the truth is I have been somewhat lazy.

I recently found and purchased some 54mm models from Tin Soldiers . I have been wanting to make the transition to larger models for some time now and decided to finally take the plunge. The last large scale (above 28mm) model that I painted must have been more than 10 years ago, and that was for Inquisitor– you know, the 40k game with crap rules and great models.

So I decided to jump in with a unarmored Spartan Hoplite, wearing only a pilos helmet- fairly typical in the 3rd – 4th Century BCE- and before the adoption of Macedonian equipment and tactics in 225 BCE. I guess I was inspired by the Osprey book cover.

This first picture is of the unpainted, unprimed model- just the way it came out of the package. I was impressed at the level of detail and the lack of flash or other casting imperfections that are fairly common with metal models. The metal is rather soft- not hard like pewter, but unless you drop it, it should hold up well. For $10 you really can’t beat the quality.

After some very minor touch ups with a file the model was ready to go. The first step in painting- which any experienced modeler will tell you is actually the second step- right after clean up- is priming the model. I didn’t do anything special, I used Armory Brand white primer straight out the can. It covered well and brought up some of the details- which were really stunning.

I then let the model dry for a couple of days- the first couple of hours were under my heat/drying lamp.

The next step- and actually the first time I got to put a paint brush onto the model- I started with the flesh. Now I used a 5 step process for speed, and overall effect:

#1 Paint all the flesh area(s) with your desired flesh tone.

#2 Use a dark wash (I used AP Strong Tone) and allowed it to dry.

#3 Go back and repaint all but the deepest area(s) the original flesh tone- this is a shading step.

#4 Then wash the painted areas with a thinned (50% water) mix of AP Soft Tone- and allow to completely dry.

#5 Pick out area(s) for final highlight effect using original flesh tone- it is pretty fast and quick and doesn’t require too much technical skill (like wet-blending) or knowledge with a color pallet. I estimate my total time in the model thus far is less than 2-3 hours.